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#1
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Can anyone explain this?
Awhile back I posted about a hard drive partition which went whacky on
me. I spent days if not weeks trying to repair the Fat Tables. I finally gave up. Ever since, I have been trying to save files from the drive, little by little and making a list of those that can not be saved to see if I can re-download them. Many of these files came from the internet, sdome from friends, others came from outside sources and a few will never be replaced. The majority of the files are .PDF. But there are saved webpages, and pictures as well, plus a few videos. This drive was Fat32 and installed in Win98se. I tried numerous ways to create an image of it, using XP and image software, but XP refused to recognise the drive, whether I plugged it into an IDE cable or a convertes taht allows it to be plugged into a USB port. I finally gave up on using XP on this drive. Using a USB bootable version of Linux, I was able to not only view all the contents on the drive, but save all of it to another drive. However, what I got were many PDF files that will not load, because they are corrupt. Photos which do load, but are missing part of the picture (some of those I have saved with an image editor). And some saved webpages that lack some of their pictures and/or .JS or .CSS files. (the JS and CSS files I just deleted, because I can usually still load the pages offline. Anyhow, I began by deleting all the files and folders from the drive, which I had on an older backup. That left me with about 2.5gb of unsaved data. File by file, or folder by folder I have moved any salvagable data to another drive. This has left me with around 120 PDF files to replace, and maybe 30 pictures which are important enough to replace. The videos were all from youtube, so I just wrote down the names and will re-download them. Little by little, I am getting back as much of this data as I can. It's very time consuming. What I would like someone to explain, is why I can click on those PDF files on the original drive, and they open fully, and do not lack parts. Yet, they can not be copied to another drive. I even tried to load them in a PDF viewer, and use the "SAVE AS" feature to save them. That gives me an error saying "source can not be read". That puzzles me. If the source can not be read, why can I view the whole thing? Note, I am doing this in Win98. The same files that can not be saved using 98, are the same ones that Linux saved and will not open (corrupt). Can anyone explain this? Is there any sort of PDF repair tool made? One final thing, there were also a few .ZIP files that were not copyable. One in particular contained nothing but about 25 pictures. I opened it with Winzip, and tried to extract them. I kept getting error messages but Winzip was able to extract 21 of the 25 images. Thank God I am almost done with this drive, there are about 150 files that could not be saved, and I have marked them as BAD. Now I have to write down every file name and it's folder location so I can hopefully replace them. Once that's done, I'll be glad to toss this HDD in the trash and never see it again.... From now on, I will backup much more often.... |
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#3
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Can anyone explain this?
In message , Paul
writes: wrote: What I would like someone to explain, is why I can click on those files on the original drive, and they open fully, and do not lack parts. Yet, they can not be copied to another drive. I even tried to load them in a PDF viewer, and use the "SAVE AS" feature to save them. That gives me an error saying "source can not be read". That puzzles me. If the source can not be read, why can I view the whole thing? Can anyone explain this? Is there any sort of PDF repair tool made? I can only provide a partial explanation. It's good though (-: One of the improvements in PDF, over PostScript, is each displayed page is supposed to be independent of the previous page. I could in theory, have a PDF reader open, and show me Page 1. I would have to click the down button, and try *all* the pages one by one, until the tool blows a fuse when it hits a missing part. James did say he can "view the whole thing", but I suspect you are right - he probably means he can _load_ the file without his reader reporting errors, but hasn't actually stepped through all the pages. Can you suggest any .PDF reader that allows individual page saving? (Or, ideally, range-of-pages saving?) If the pages are supposed to be independent, this ought to be possible, though I could easily believe that no reader offers it. If he could do that, then he could use one of several PDF-stitching utilities to reassemble the pages that _do_ display. That way he could at least reassemble a file that loads (and views) without errors, though with some pages missing. What should happen though, is some operations in the PDF viewer, should cause the file to be read from one end to another. And then the problem would be discovered. Try doing a "word search" on one of these PDF files that opened for you, and see if the tool freezes up or something. Given the opportunity, your luck will not hold out. I have had PDFs where I can "go to" pages after the ones that won't display, which supports your statement that the pages are independent. (Is a .PDF a "linked list" of pages, or is there an "index" [not the one that might or might not be in the pages displayed] at the front?) ******* As for repairing a PDF, forget it. Where is the redundant information stored ? There isn't any. [] -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Practicall every British actor with a bus pass is in there ... Barry Norman (on "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" [2011]), RT 2015/12/12-18 |
#4
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Can anyone explain this?
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
I have had PDFs where I can "go to" pages after the ones that won't display, which supports your statement that the pages are independent. (Is a .PDF a "linked list" of pages, or is there an "index" [not the one that might or might not be in the pages displayed] at the front?) When the document contains hyperlinks, I think they're stored at the end of the document, and emitted by the thing preparing the PDF, after the pages themselves have been processed. The text letters for the Index are stored on the page where the Index appears visually. But I've seen some number strings down at the end, which probably say which page to jump to. I sometimes end up looking down there, after receiving a suspected document with malevolent Javascript. As I think the Javascript can be down there. But a web article claims there are no guarantees with the Javascript, as other "encoded" lines in the file, can execute and generate Javascript which can run. As long as Javascript is disabled in the Preferences, that provides a measure of safety. And when do I look in PDF files in that much detail ? When I visit a web site and the "Save As" dialog appears on the screen, before I've had a chance to do anything. As that's a sign some script kiddie is trying their hand at it. Any time a web site is in an awful hurry to give you a PDF file, that's not a good sign. They're trying to get the in-browser plugin to run, on a tool that still has Javascript-in-PDF enabled. Paul |
#5
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Can anyone explain this?
In message , Paul
writes: J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: I have had PDFs where I can "go to" pages after the ones that won't display, which supports your statement that the pages are independent. (Is a .PDF a "linked list" of pages, or is there an "index" [not the one that might or might not be in the pages displayed] at the front?) When the document contains hyperlinks, I think they're stored at the end of the document, and emitted by the thing preparing the PDF, after the pages themselves have been processed. The text letters for the Index are stored on the page where the Index appears visually. But I've seen some number strings down at the end, which probably say which page to jump to. [] I didn't mean any Index provided for humans to read - I was asking about the structure of a .PDF (I could go and look it up, but it sounds like you know the answer). So if I load a .pdf, and then tell my reader to go to page 10, how does it know where in the file to go to: is there a non-human-readable index near the beginning of the file to where all the pages are, or does it have to work its way through the file to get there? I was thinking about a corrupted block in the middle of the file: I've had ones where some pages wouldn't display, but where I've been able to go to _after_ the corruption and still view pages OK, and I was wondering how this was possible. (Though I think in my cases these have mostly been .pdf files whose structure is too complicated for their own good, rather than ones that have actually been corrupted, e. g. by a dodgy disc drive.) -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf "Bother," said Pooh, as Windows crashed into piglet. |
#6
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Can anyone explain this?
On Mon, 4 Dec 2017 14:57:57 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: James did say he can "view the whole thing", but I suspect you are right - he probably means he can _load_ the file without his reader reporting errors, but hasn't actually stepped through all the pages. Can you suggest any .PDF reader that allows individual page saving? (Or, ideally, range-of-pages saving?) If the pages are supposed to be independent, this ought to be possible, though I could easily believe that no reader offers it. If he could do that, then he could use one of several PDF-stitching utilities to reassemble the pages that _do_ display. That way he could at least reassemble a file that loads (and views) without errors, though with some pages missing. Some very large PDF files get real slow when I go page to page (on a normal file and HDD). On some of these PDF files on the defective HDD, I have stepped thru them, and it appears they were intact. Others I just opened looked at the first page and then went to the last page. At this point, I am giving up on any files I could not copy from that bad drive. I have already downloaded about 1/3 of the PDF files that came from the web. I'm finding that what I lost was mostly from the web. I emailed a friend to get back some stuff I got from him, and in the end, I really dont think I will lose too much that cant be replaced. A few JPG images that were important, I opened from the bad drive. They do open, but part of them are grayed (missing). If they are still usable, I take PSP (Paint Shop Pro), do a screen capture, and import the pic into PSP. Then I SAVE AS and save it to a good drive. That works pretty well, but only if the file is complete enough to salvage. These pics are mostly electrical or mechanical drawings. If they are just some "cute" thing I sabed from the web, I can live without them. There are still a few ZIP files I need to attempt to deal with too. I'm now down to about 550mb of stuff left to retrieve or repair. As soon as I re-download something, I delete the bad files from that drive. So the drive is now showing about 550mb remaining. That's workable. In fact it's taking less time to replace files than all the many hours I spent trying to repair that HDD. However, I did make the drive readable again, using Norton Disk Doctor (from the early 2000's), which was made for Win98, WinME, and Win2000. Of course this drive is running Win98, so that all works out. That Norton DD really struggled to get thru this drive, I had to run it 3 times. The first time I locked up. It was showing 20 or more black blocks, meaning corrupt data blocks. So that drive is really bad. Oddly enough, that drive has 3 partitions, G: H: and I:. The trouble is on the first partition (G), the other two work fine. In fact I was saving the salvagable files to I:, since I cant use any large flash drives on Win98. After I saved a bunch of files, I booted to Win2000, and moved those files to a flash drive. At first this seemed to be an impossible task, but I finally figured out a system and now it's just a matter of time.... and lots of downloading. There will be a few losses, but in the end, I wont lose too much. I'm rebuilding that whole partition on an external HDD, and re-organizing it in the process. That HDD is connected to my XP machine. I began all of that by starting with my most recent backup, and filling in the missing stuff. Either way, I will be backing up much more often from now on. This was a hard lesson to learn..... |
#7
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Can anyone explain this?
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#8
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Can anyone explain this?
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul writes: J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: I have had PDFs where I can "go to" pages after the ones that won't display, which supports your statement that the pages are independent. (Is a .PDF a "linked list" of pages, or is there an "index" [not the one that might or might not be in the pages displayed] at the front?) When the document contains hyperlinks, I think they're stored at the end of the document, and emitted by the thing preparing the PDF, after the pages themselves have been processed. The text letters for the Index are stored on the page where the Index appears visually. But I've seen some number strings down at the end, which probably say which page to jump to. [] I didn't mean any Index provided for humans to read - I was asking about the structure of a .PDF (I could go and look it up, but it sounds like you know the answer). So if I load a .pdf, and then tell my reader to go to page 10, how does it know where in the file to go to: is there a non-human-readable index near the beginning of the file to where all the pages are, or does it have to work its way through the file to get there? I was thinking about a corrupted block in the middle of the file: I've had ones where some pages wouldn't display, but where I've been able to go to _after_ the corruption and still view pages OK, and I was wondering how this was possible. (Though I think in my cases these have mostly been .pdf files whose structure is too complicated for their own good, rather than ones that have actually been corrupted, e. g. by a dodgy disc drive.) It's got some numbering scheme, and it uses some sort of "balanced tree" data structure, whatever that means. This is from a copy of "PDF Reference 1.6" (1236 pages). Which is, of course, a PDF document. 1 0 obj % Document catalog /Type /Catalog /Pages 100 0 R % Page tree /StructTreeRoot 300 0 R % Structure tree root endobj 100 0 obj % Page tree /Type /Pages /Kids [ 101 1 R % First page object 102 0 R % Second page object ] /Count 2 % Page count endobj 101 1 obj % First page object /Type /Page ... 102 0 obj % Second page object /Type /Page So there are identifiers, and like XML, the syntax delimits objects in the file. If a chunk went missing though, I don't immediately see how you could jump to much of a conclusion. The page tree appears to be declaring the pagelist, so I suppose you know that object 102 comes after object 101. But what if the page tree was the missing file system sector ? I guess the "/Type /Page" thing says it is the beginning of a page. Obviously, I find PDF baffling and I just don't get it. It's more of a computer science lecture than a language. ******* Both the PLRM spec and the PDF Reference, are available on the Adobe site for download. When the PLRM first came out, these were printed as books, and I actually bought the PLRM so I could have a copy. Now, they're just a download. The PLRM is thick enough, you have to be careful when holding the book, to protect the spine. I used to "repair" print jobs at work. Someone would bring a print job to me and say "this damn thing won't print past page 16". And I would crack open the PLRM, spot a missing "pop" from a recurring data structure, fix'em up and send it off to the printer, so the whole thing would print. The printers didn't have a lot of memory back then, and careless PostScript constructs could actually bomb before the print job was finished. With PDF, there wasn't a need any more for that sort of thing. And in a way, that's good, because I don't get PDF anyway. Paul |
#9
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Can anyone explain this?
In message , Paul
writes: J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: [] I didn't mean any Index provided for humans to read - I was asking about the structure of a .PDF (I could go and look it up, but it sounds like you know the answer). So if I load a .pdf, and then tell my reader to go to page 10, how does it know where in the file to go to: is there a non-human-readable index near the beginning of the file to where all the pages are, or does it have to work its way through the file to get there? I was thinking about a corrupted block [] It's got some numbering scheme, and it uses some sort of "balanced tree" data structure, whatever that means. This is from a copy of "PDF Reference 1.6" (1236 pages). Which is, of course, a PDF document. 1 0 obj % Document catalog /Type /Catalog /Pages 100 0 R % Page tree /StructTreeRoot 300 0 R % Structure tree root endobj 100 0 obj % Page tree /Type /Pages /Kids [ 101 1 R % First page object 102 0 R % Second page object ] /Count 2 % Page count endobj 101 1 obj % First page object /Type /Page ... 102 0 obj % Second page object /Type /Page So there are identifiers, and like XML, the syntax delimits objects in the file. If a chunk went missing though, I don't immediately see how you could jump to much of a conclusion. [] So if you tell it to go to page 100, there's nothing near the beginning of the file that tells it that page 100 starts at file offset #123ABC, and it has to hunt through the file looking for the start of page 100's code (or, worse, has to find 100 page-start markers). No wonder PDF parsers are so slow! Yes, I agree, it's a baffling language - "more of a computer science lecture than a language" is about right. It seems needlessly complex. (I don't know how much of that is PDF and how much the embedded PostScript. Quite a lot is the latter, I think.) -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf If you carry on hating, you're the one who's damaged. - Sir Harold Atcherley, sent to the Burma/Siam railway in April 1943 |
#10
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Can anyone explain this?
On Mon, 4 Dec 2017 22:25:09 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: In message , writes: [] Some very large PDF files get real slow when I go page to page (on a normal file and HDD). On some of these PDF files on the defective HDD, I have stepped thru them, and it appears they were intact. But those ones are broken if copied? Odd. Others I just opened looked at the first page and then went to the last page. At this point, I am giving up on any files I could not copy from that bad drive. I have already downloaded about 1/3 of the PDF files that came from the web. I'm finding that what I lost was mostly from the web. I emailed a friend to get back some stuff I got from him, and in the end, I really dont think I will lose too much that cant be replaced. A few JPG images that were important, I opened from the bad drive. They What are you opening them in? PDF Exchange Viewer (the best one ever made) Older version for Win98 of course. do open, but part of them are grayed (missing). If they are still usable, I take PSP (Paint Shop Pro), do a screen capture, and import the pic into PSP. Then I SAVE AS and save it to a good drive. That works pretty well, but only if the file is complete enough to salvage. These pics are mostly electrical or mechanical drawings. If they are just some "cute" thing I sabed from the web, I can live without them. IrfanView (which will work on '98, though I'm not sure about the latest version) will open damaged JPGs and let you save them (with the grey part), without needing to do a screen capture. (Might avoid you losing resolution for big images, which might be important if they're fine-detail diagrammes.) I may try that.... One weird one was a christmas card someone emailed to me which I saved. Just a small JPG image. It completely loads the whole picture, but could not be saved. I did a capture on that one and resaved it. There are still a few ZIP files I need to attempt to deal with too. I'm now down to about 550mb of stuff left to retrieve or repair. As soon as Any idea how many files that is? Most small files could be saved. What was lost were files over 1 or 2 megs and the bigger they are, the more likely they could not be saved. Oddly enough a bunch of 4kb gif files also died in a saved webpage. They were just junk files anyhow, so I just deleted them. I am now down to about 70 files to download. Most are PDF. 550mb sounds like a lot of files, but many PDFs are 5mb up to 90mb, so those add up fast. I'm downloading a lot of the small ones on my dialup, but anything big I have to go to a WIFI. I just keep adding more file names to a text file. I'm finding that by googling the exact file name with extension, most come right up. There are a few that I am not finding though. I expect to lose at least 10 of them for good. I also lost some stuff that I scanned on a scanner and I will have to rescan them. I re-download something, I delete the bad files from that drive. So the (Do you delete now-empty folders, too?) Yep, but there is one that will not allow me to delete the folder or the file in it. And all it is, is a small JPG. drive is now showing about 550mb remaining. That's workable. In fact it's taking less time to replace files than all the many hours I spent trying to repair that HDD. However, I did make the drive readable again, using Norton Disk Doctor (from the early 2000's), which was made for Win98, WinME, and Win2000. Of course this drive is running Win98, so that all works out. That Norton DD really struggled to get thru this drive, I had to run it 3 times. The first time I locked up. It was showing 20 or more black blocks, meaning corrupt data blocks. So (If you run it again, is the number of "black blocks" going up?) I'm not touching it till I finish retreiving the file names of the bad files. I'm actually wondering what will happen if I just reformat that partition???? Regardless, that drive will not be used again.... I picked up a new 120gb drive for about $20, so it's not worth using crap. that drive is really bad. Oddly enough, that drive has 3 partitions, G: H: and I:. The trouble is on the first partition (G), the other two work fine. In fact I was saving the salvagable files to I:, since I cant use Does sound as if it's a genuinely bad area of surface. Whats weird is that this G: partition was storage and never used all that much. The H: partition was used to download stuff, and was used and modified and changed all the time, and that one is fine.... Drive I: is also fine. (All on the same physical HDD). any large flash drives on Win98. After I saved a bunch of files, I booted to Win2000, and moved those files to a flash drive. At first this seemed to be an impossible task, but I finally figured out a system and now it's just a matter of time.... and lots of downloading. There will be a few losses, but in the end, I wont lose too much. I'm rebuilding that whole partition on an external HDD, and re-organizing it in the process. That HDD is connected to my XP machine. I began all of that by starting with my most recent backup, and filling in the missing stuff. Either way, I will be backing up much more often from now on. This was a hard lesson to learn..... (-: |
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Can anyone explain this?
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#12
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Can anyone explain this?
On Tue, 5 Dec 2017 08:32:37 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: In message , writes: [] A few JPG images that were important, I opened from the bad drive. They What are you opening them in? PDF Exchange Viewer (the best one ever made) Older version for Win98 of course. No, I meant what are you open the _JPG_ files with? I always liked ACDSee the best.... [] IrfanView (which will work on '98, though I'm not sure about the latest version) will open damaged JPGs and let you save them (with the grey part), without needing to do a screen capture. (Might avoid you losing resolution for big images, which might be important if they're fine-detail diagrammes.) I may try that.... One weird one was a christmas card someone emailed to me which I saved. Just a small JPG image. It completely loads the whole picture, but could not be saved. I did a capture on that one and resaved it. Christmas cards often have anti-copy - though that shouldn't be the case if it's just a .JPG _file_. This was homemade of someone's pet. [] now down to about 550mb of stuff left to retrieve or repair. As soon as Any idea how many files that is? Like i said, around 70 or 80. However I went to the local WIFI this evening and got about half of them. Several were old electronics magazines from like 1920 to 1990, and not only did I download all those I lost, but added about 80 more to my collection. I had a super fast connection so I just kept clicking on them. I would have downloaded more of the missing files but I only put half my list in text form before I left home. [] I am now down to about 70 files to download. Most are PDF. 550mb sounds like a lot of files, but many PDFs are 5mb up to 90mb, so those add up fast. I'm downloading a lot of the small ones on my dialup, but anything big I have to go to a WIFI. I just keep adding more file names to a text file. I'm finding that by googling the exact file name with extension, most come right up. There are a few that I am not finding though. I Yes, I've found the same. The wayback machine may also be worth a look, though I think you can only give it URLs, not filenames. (But if googling the filename gives links that don't work, they may be worth trying on Wayback, if the "don't work" is just "can't find".) expect to lose at least 10 of them for good. I also lost some stuff that When the number gets that low, you could list them (probably better with description) here; you never know! Keep us informed, anyway - since we've shared your anguish as you proceed, it'd be nice to follow you to the bitter end. Well, a few are my own graphic images that I created. Those are gone forvever. One was given to me by a veternarian and is not something in the public domain. He's retired so I doubt I can replace that. A few other things I will have to try to get from the persons who I got them files from, because they are not something you can just find online. There is one file that you can watch for though. It's the 2011 National Electrical Code book. That is a copyrighted book, but a new one is made every year and due to its age, it was put on the web, in a sort of secret manner. I somewhat recall seeing the URL on a newsgroup. Maybe a year ago. That has come in handy several times for just looking up stuff when I wire my own buildings. I can not find it now. Filename: National Electrical Code 2011.pdf Size is 10,884kb I scanned on a scanner and I will have to rescan them. That should be trivial, unless you're talking of a huge piece of paper. Just common scans, no big deal to redo them.... I re-download something, I delete the bad files from that drive. So the (Do you delete now-empty folders, too?) Yep, but there is one that will not allow me to delete the folder or the file in it. And all it is, is a small JPG. (IrfanView can also delete the current file, though I doubt that'd work either.) [] I wonder if that program has a Win98 version. Remember this drive is on a Win98 computer. Like I said, I plugged it into my XP desktop and XP cant read that drive. It just tells me to format it. But Win98 does read it, and I could also read it using a bootable USB Linux stick. (Windows 2000 wont read it either). (If you run it again, is the number of "black blocks" going up?) I'm not touching it till I finish retreiving the file names of the bad files. I'm actually wondering what will happen if I just reformat that [] At first this seemed to be an impossible task, but I finally figured out a system and now it's just a matter of time.... and lots of downloading. [] Either way, I will be backing up much more often from now on. This was a hard lesson to learn..... (-: When this is completed, I have the urge to take that drive out in the woods and use it for target practice with my rifle LOL I wouldn't be the first guy to do that. There are a few youtube videos where some guy unloads some powerful guns into a stack of 20 or so harddrives and the bullet penetrates as many drives as 7 or 8 drives. He works for some company that is supposed to destroy hard drives to remove all data from them. This is how he does it. Pretty goofy is you ask me... Not to mention a big waste of Hard drives that supposedly still worked. |
#13
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Can anyone explain this?
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#14
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Can anyone explain this?
On Tue, 5 Dec 2017 21:19:17 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: In message , writes: [] (Do you delete now-empty folders, too?) Yep, but there is one that will not allow me to delete the folder or the file in it. And all it is, is a small JPG. (IrfanView can also delete the current file, though I doubt that'd work either.) [] I wonder if that program has a Win98 version. Remember this drive is on I've just looked, and the website (current version 4.50) currently mentions XP to 10. However, yes, it certainly worked under '98 - the one I have on my '98 machine is 4.36, and (as you _might_ expect from the number) I can't honestly say I notice much difference from the current version, certainly for what I do with it on the '98 machine. I'll have to look on oldapps.com or a similar site. I think most softrware reaches a peak, where it can no longer be improved, so they add bloat so they can sell more..... Then the bloat renders it useless or at least slow. I have used PSP (Paint shop pro) since the mid 90s. It was originally shareware, and it worked great. It got more and more bloated, making it hard to learn and to use. Then it became a commercial pay program, trying to compete with Photoshop. I still use the older versions of it, which are easy and simple. Then again, isn't Windows 10 just a bloated version of Win8? And Win8 never won any prizes. I have never used Win7, but I'd try it. You could not give me Win8 or 10. Win98 does almost everything I need. Poor USB support is one downfall though. XP does everything. Why should I even want anything newer? And why should I toss a perfectly working computer and dish out hundreds of dollars to buy a newer machine to run any bloated versions of Windows. which wont offer me anything useful. [] When this is completed, I have the urge to take that drive out in the woods and use it for target practice with my rifle LOL I wouldn't be the first guy to do that. There are a few youtube videos where some guy unloads some powerful guns into a stack of 20 or so harddrives and the bullet penetrates as many drives as 7 or 8 drives. He works for some company that is supposed to destroy hard drives to remove all data from them. This is how he does it. Pretty goofy is you ask me... Not to mention a big waste of Hard drives that supposedly still worked. I share the part of your mind that that last sentence implies. I hate violent destruction of manufactured items. We used to have a nearby computer recycling company. They dismantled old computers and sold cards, drives, memory, monitors, old software, keyboards,mice and more. A lot of the parts of the computer I am using right now, came from there. I know I got the power supply from them, which had 3 times the wattage of the original PS, which was not adaquate. And I still have a box of HDDs from them that are small for today, but still work. They were a small company, but they paid the rent and had jobs for a dozen or so employees, plus provided a service for computer users wanting to build their own or upgrade the hardware. One day the state came along and put them out of business. The state took over the "recycling" by force. They began charging people $20 to dispose of computers, another $20 for monitors, another $20 for printers, an so on. Those computers are (from what I heard) shipped over to foreign companies to dispose. No longer can we buy used parts, jobs were lost, and that company lost everything. What a shame.... As far as I know, there are methods to wipe a hard drive so nothing can ever be retrived, and they are non-destructive, meaning the HDD can be reused. |
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